4 Things to Consider Before Renting an Office for Your Startup

April 11, 2017

8:30 pm

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Moving your startup operations to a physical office can be exciting. After all, it’s an important milestone that will enable you to attract foot traffic, escape the distractions at home, and get closer with your team. But without a strategic approach, it may lead to disastrous financial losses that could strain your company of resources.

Before you commit to signing on the dotted line, try these four cost-effective alternatives before renting a physical office:

Coworking Spaces

Before you rent out an entire office for your company, consider looking for coworking spaces to lower your overhead costs. These are normally used by freelancers, remote workers, and self-employed professionals, but they can also cater to small startup teams.

The advantage of coworking spaces is that you can share equipment, supplies, utilities, and facilities already available. They also give you opportunities to expand your professional network and form beneficial partnerships with other companies. To start looking for coworking spaces, you can refer to platforms like Coworker, ShareDesk, and WeWork.

Virtual Office Services

Sometimes, having a physical office space for your business is all about maintaining a professional image. As you talk to bigger prospects, you might be hesitant to give your home address or phone number whenever they ask for ways to reach you. But rather than leasing an office for face value, you can leverage virtual office services that can provide you with a corporate business address, mail forwarding, and a live receptionist to answer all your phone calls.

There are currently a number of companies that offer virtual office “packages” for varying budgets. With the help of commercial mailbox services like Mailbox Works, you can also partner with other commercial establishments to help local customers connect with your company. This can be significantly cheaper, but if you want the whole package, you may choose from popular virtual office companies such as Opus Virtual Offices, Regus, and Servcorp.

Business-Grade Project Management

If you’ve been operating your startup through emails or messaging apps alone, then you’re probably eager to rent an actual office as soon as possible. Understandably, dealing with a ton of emails every single day isn’t exactly motivating. It may also be the cause of communication issues between you and your remote employees.

However, moving to an office isn’t the only way to make remote businesses work. There are plenty of online collaboration tools you can use to keep everyone on the same page. Comprehensive platforms like Basecamp and Asana also have intuitive interfaces that require very little training, making it easy to integrate them in your startup without minimal disruptions in productivity.

On-Demand Meeting Spaces

If you have communication issues with employees, partners, and clients, an online conferencing tool like Skype for Business may not be enough. And although informal meetups may suffice if you need to see your team, meeting with potential clients warrants a professional meeting space. This is where on-demand meeting spaces would be a good choice.

For general meeting purposes, you can simply book a coworking space for a few hours or an entire day. But if you prefer something more attractive to prospects, you can use Bizly to book hotels or Breather for more practical meeting rooms.

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Vikas Agrawal is a start-up Investor & co-founder of the Infographic design agency Infobrandz that offers creative and premium visual content solutions to medium to large companies. Content created by Infobrandz are loved, shared & can be found all over the internet on high authority platforms like HuffingtonPost, Businessinsider, Forbes , Tech.co & EliteDaily.